A shift in perspective occurs when
you're not consistent with your use of
verbs or pronouns, and in this video
we'll just talk about pronouns shifts.
There are two kinds of pronouns shifts
to watch out for. You can either shift
awkwardly from the singular to the
plural (and we call this a shift in
number) or you can shift in terms of the
person that you are talking about. And we
have pronouns here that are first person,
second person, or third person. If you
shift awkwardly from one to another then
it's a shift in person. Let's have a look
at both of these categories in some
detail ,and we'll look at some examples.
The first one then (shifts in person) --
we start with "They were playing laser
tag. We were having so much fun." You can
see that "they" over here -- this is a third
person pronoun, whereas "we" is a first
person pronoun and if you are actually
trying to talk about the same people, the
same group of people, then it would
indeed be very awkward to shift from the
third person to the first person. I think
this is a fairly obvious error. This is
one we can easily fix. We can make them
the same: "They were playing laser tag.
They were having so much fun." Or we can
put them both in the first person. But
not every shift in perspective is
necessarily bad. If you look at the
second example here ("We can all use some
TLC, and you don't have to feel bad about
treating yourself once in a while"),
we've shifted from the first person to
the second person, but this is not
necessarily a problem, and I think the
sentence reads just fine as it is. The
point then is not to go overboard and
correct every shift in perspective, but
just watch out for ones that you find
quite awkward, and that need a little bit
of fixing. The second kind of shift to
watch out for is a shift in number.
These ... kinds of shifts
are more common and they're more
difficult to spot sometimes. Here we
start with "One of those politicians" ... "one"
being singular, and then we say "One of
those politicians confessed that they had
rigged the vote." "They" is plural,
and the problem is that we have sort of
assumed that "they" refers back to
"politicians," which is also plural, but it
really should refer back to "one." And
that's why if you are trying to be super
correct here, this should be "he or she,"
which would make it singular. Okay, so "One
of those politicians confessed that he or
she had rigged the vote." of course it
would make much more sense to pick one
of these because presumably you know
which gender this one person is. So you
might say "he had rigged the vote" or "she
had rigged the vote." Now "they" here is
what we sometimes call "singular they," and
singular they is becoming increasingly
common in colloquial speech (so when
people talk to each other on the street),
but in academic writing it's still
somewhat frowned upon. And I would probably
rejig this to make sure that they're
both singular here. Or if you do quite a
major revision you could make things
plural. Then we have the last one, and
this one kind of reaffirms the same
point ,so we have the Department of
Conservation (that's singular), "its" is
also singular ... so so far so good ... but then
"they" in the next sentence is plural, and
the same mistake creeps in and I wanted
to add this example here, because often
the mistake also happens when you're
dealing with a group or some kind of
organization. And a group may include
multiple members, but often a group or an
organization is singular in terms of
grammar. That's why you really have
to watch out that you don't use these
kinds of plural pronouns. Those are the
two pronoun shifts to watch out for.
Watch out for shifts in person and in
number.